


Faith Unbroken

by AdorableDoom



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Permanent Injury, spiritassassin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9195614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdorableDoom/pseuds/AdorableDoom
Summary: Faith lost and found again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Major Spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
> 
> Set Pre-Movie.

       Two standard weeks after the end of the world, Baze awoke to cold sheets and an empty bed. He's more terrified in that moment than he has been since the world came crumbling down around them. Fear made even worse by the knowledge that there is only possible place that Chirrut would be. The city streets are quiet for the first time in Baze's memory and perhaps for the first time in the holy city's lengthy history. It was the first thing they did after the fire's stopped burning, establish a city wide curfew that began at dusk and lasted until dawn.  
    A few people had tried to resist.  
    They'd shot them in the street.  
    There wasn't much resisting after that.  
    The city seemed unnatural this way. Too still. Too silent. Baze felt as if he were walking through a graveyard. Maybe in a way he was.  
    It takes him an hour to get seven blocks, ducking and hiding from the white armored soldiers that move through the broken city like maggots feeding on something rotting. Hating this new normal. Chirrut was exactly where Baze knew he would be. Perched atop a fallen pillar in the shadow of the ruined temple that had once reached the sky. The temple that had once been their home.  
     "It took me two hours to get here," Chirrut said though how he knew it was Baze who had ducked into the alcove and not some trooper or desperate thief he couldn't say. "I kept thinking someone would stop me but I guess some blind man wandering around isn't much of a concern to anyone." Baze winced as if he'd been struck and honestly that would have been preferable. "What are you doing here?" Baze asked, keeping his voice low in spite of the fact they were alone and no one had dared come near this cursed place since the night the city had fallen. No one but this damned fool it seemed.  
      Chirrut drew himself up a little straighter. "My duty," he said as if it were obvious. The night was starting to fade around them, brilliant orange light creeping up the horizon. He was wearing his acolyte robes, Baze realized with a jolt. The same ones he'd been wearing when . . . that night.  
     They still smelled like smoke and blood, scorched and blackened here and there. He should've thrown them out when he'd thrown out his own. Anger filled him. Anger was easier than sorrow and regret. "There's nothing here!" he snapped, gesturing at the ruins just over Chirrut's shoulder and hating himself for it.  
    "It's all gone now! You're guarding nothing!" The first thing the army of the newly formed Empire had done when their ships had touched down was burn the temple. It burned so brightly that it lit up the sky like an early dawn. For days after the smoke still hung thick and choking on the air. They came like thieves in the night, cowards who used the darkness to try and hide the atrocities they committed against the planet and its people.  
      Chirrut glared at him. "They're taking the crystals, did you know that?" he snapped back, anger mirroring Baze's own in it's ferocity. "They're prying them out of the temples walls, off the statues. Probably out of the lightsabers too." An icy wave of horror washed over Baze. Chirrut had been unconscious when the transports had started arriving, hovering somewhere between life and death in the back of a clothing shop where they and the few remaining guardians had taken shelter after the massacre at the temple.  
     They weren't Jedis but the newly formed Empire hadn't distinguished between those who used the Force and those who had merely tried to follow it's teachings. Enemies of the State, the Empire were calling the Jedi, traitors. Baze thinks more often than he'd like about the little children that had been constantly underfoot in the temple. They had seemed so small, swimming in robes that seemed far too big and much too solemn for such tiny beings. The ones that hadn't died in the temple fire the troopers had cut down.  
     Baze hadn't payed the transports much attention as he sat beside Chirrut, clutching at his hand as if his grip alone was enough to keep him tethered to life and praying desperately while their friends wept and moaned in agony while the world around them had fallen to splinters. Three guardians succumbed to their wounds that first night. Five more followed them into death in the days that followed. It was four days before Chirrut opened his eyes, delirious and half dazed by pain and fever. "Baze?" he'd called out, his voice a thin whisper.  
"Baze? Where are you? Why is it so dark?" It had been late in the day, sunlight streaming through the windows. Baze had been sitting beside him. He clutched Chirrut's hand so hard it was a small wonder it hadn't hurt him. "I'm here," he promised tearfully, kissing Chirrut's fingers. "But . . . . It isn't dark . . . ."  
      Baze didn't pray after that.  
      Baze shook his head, whether to clear it or keep the tears that burned in his eyes from falling, he couldn't say. "Who's going to stop them? You? By yourself?" Chirrut shrugged in that irritating way of his that it made it seem like he knew something the rest of the galaxy didn't. "If I have to," he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. There's so many things Baze wants to scream at him in that moment.  
   What's the damned point?  
   I love you.  
   If I loose you too, it will kill me.  
   He doesn't say any of those things. "Why?" he bit out. Chirrut cocked his head at him in almost puzzlement. "What do you mean why? We're the Guardians of the Whills, we are the protectors of the Temple of the Kyber," he said, gesturing at the ruins of the place that once been their home. "We're the protectors of nothing!" Baze wasn't yelling but he was close to it. "The Temple is gone! The Jedi are gone! There is nothing left!" When the dawn finally come after that terrible night, the sky lighting up a sickly burning red from all the smoke and ash, the Jedi and their temple were no more. Chirrut's shoulders slumped slightly but his stance remained determined. "We are still here," he said finally, "the Force is still here." It's those five simple words that make him snap.  
     "Where was the Force that night!" Baze screamed, past caring who heard him now. "Where was it when the Temple burned? When the Jedi were being murdered in the streets? When it's guardians were dying?" Baze isn't sure if he's asking Chirrut or the very universe itself. They had devoted their lives to the service of the Force, had protected it's temple, guarded it's crystals and followed its teachings for most of their lives. And for what?  
     What had it mattered it the end? Baze took several steps forward until they were face to face. The streets were rapidly filling with light, the last of the stars in the sky fading away as the dawn came. "Where was it when you--" He can't even say the words.  
     When the fire had started, Chirrut had run into the flames. Baze had followed him, pulled him from the fire. "You were the most devote of any us," he said, hating how helpless he sounded. Desperate. Lost.  
     "Why didn't it protect you?" Chirrut's sorrowful expression softened. He reached up then, taking Baze's face in his hands and lowering his head so that Baze's forehead rested against his own. His skin feels cool, a welcome relief after days of burning fever. "It did," he said softly, smiling wanly, "it sent you. You protected me."  
      Baze laughed to keep from breaking down completely. He all but yanked Chirrut into his arms and held him close, grateful beyond words that he was still here to embrace. Chirrut returned the gesture avidly. The horizon had exploded with brilliant gold sunlight, chasing away the last of the darkness. "We keep fighting," Chirrut said against his shoulder, "you and me. As long we're able, however it ends, we keep fighting them."  
      In that moment, in the shadow of the ruins of their former home, beneath the flag of a tyrant, in the arms of the person he loved, Baze felt less lost than he had in weeks. The temple was gone. The Jedi were gone. But they were still here and they were together. In the moment and in all of them to come, that was enough.  
      Baze believed in them. And that was enough. 


End file.
